


Professional Curiosity

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: First Meetings, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 20:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21167525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: When Tony Stark recognizes a name in rumors of another group of superpowered individuals, he can't just sit by and wonder about it. So, it's off to Greenwich Village to see what he can learn.





	Professional Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whitedandelions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitedandelions/gifts).

Tony found out about wizards in New York the same way he’d found out about the spider kid: conspiracy theory subreddits. He had a few programs that were specifically set up to trawl through the conversations and pick out anything that might have even the slightest hint of another enhanced individual out in the world. He’d found all kinds of interesting folks, and a whole lot of them were located right there in New York. Then he was alerted to a guy in Hong Kong who swore up, down, and sideways that the entire city had been nearly decimated right before time rewound itself and fixed the disaster. He claimed that the world had been saved by wizards— well, the word he used was sorcerers— and that they were based out of linked chapters in several cities: Hong Kong, London, Kathmandu, and, naturally, New York. 

It took a lot of digging after that. As with most conspiracy theories there was little more than rumor to work with, but rumor had led him to all kinds of interesting things in the past. Like that time a vague rumor turned out to be the remains of JARVIS preventing his murder bot from stealing nuclear codes and destroying the planet. Good times.

Still, once he’d sorted fact from fiction he faced an entirely new and unexpected dilemma: a name he recognized. Brilliant minds were something he’d been aware of long before his life had turned to world-saving, and Stephen Strange had landed himself on the brilliant list before Tony had even come close to becoming the arrogant business mogul that drew the attention of terrorists duplicating Stark tech in a cave. He’d been top of the list of desirable candidates for hire when Stark Industries briefly entertained the idea of trying to replicate the effects of Erskine’s serum through a marriage of technology and neuroscience, but the project had ultimately been deemed useless next to bigger and better explosions. Learning that guy had become a wizard was just the coolest. 

Which, of course, left the dilemma of how to approach the situation. While a Harry Potter type could certainly prove useful in some of the situations the Avengers got themselves into they really didn’t need to recruit. So long as Strange and his buddies were staying out of the public eye there wasn’t much reason to get involved. But Tony was curious. A curious Tony couldn’t just leave off when he had the ability to investigate. He would just have to hop over to their New York base and give the good doctor a proper hello. Subtlety would be key. No sense calling too much attention.

Naturally, that meant he drove the Lamborghini to Greenwich Village instead of taking one of his suits.

Luck secured him the parking space right in front of the steps of 177A Bleecker Street. A handful of pebbles he’d scooped up from the pot of a fake plant at the Tower made the perfect ammunition. He leaned against the passenger side of the car and tossed the pebbles at the front door, careful to throw them hard enough that they’d make a sound on the other side. Just after pebble number four the door was wrenched open, revealing a broad shouldered Asian man in some sort of traditional apparel. He glanced from side to side before his gaze zeroed in on Tony.

“Hey there, Kato,” Tony chirped brightly, tossing the remaining pebbles to the ground and dusting off his hands. “Name’s Tony. Can Stephen come out to play?” He tucked his hands into his pockets and sauntered up the steps. “Or, can I come in and talk to him? I read the coolest thing about magic and mayhem on the internet the other day and his name was attached.”

He got the distinct feeling the stony faced man at the door was considering how much of a bad idea it would be to just kill him there on the doorstep. They stared one another down for several long moments. Just as Tony was starting to think that he might need to use the suit stashed in the trunk of the car a voice called out from inside the building.

“Wong?” There was a wry amusement to the voice’s tone. “Are you planning to invite the neighborhood in for tea?”

Over the man’s—Wong’s—shoulder Tony recognized the angular face of Doctor Stephen Strange as it froze in shock at the sight of the billionaire on his stoop. He looked different than the photos Stark Industries had on file. There was a distinguished kind of silvering at his temples, and where his face had once been clean shaven there was now a thin, neat goatee. His eyes, though, held an intensity that Tony was sure couldn’t be captured by any camera. It was an intensity he recognized from his bathroom mirror, the type that said this man had seen terrible things and made hard choices. And all that intensity was trained firmly on Tony. 

“I’ve got this,” Strange muttered to Wong, briefly resting a hand on his shoulder. Wong turned his back and disappeared, leaving Tony staring up at Stephen Strange who was wearing similarly traditional clothes with an actual-freaking-cape draped over his shoulders. “Mr. Stark.”

“Mr. Strange.”

“Doctor.”

“Annoying when people forget that, isn’t it?” Tony gave him a wry smile. “D’you know I’ve got a couple PhDs myself? Everyone forgets that. Nobody ever calls me Doctor.”

Strange quirked an eyebrow and gave him a once over that caused something to shiver up the length of Tony’s spine. “Would you want them to?”

“God no. Can you imagine the interview process if I got to preen about doctorates on first greeting?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Total nightmare. The SI Public Relations department would lose their minds. So, you gonna invite me in or do you really want to discuss your Hogwarts graduation here on the street?”

It wasn’t so much a spoken invitation as it was Strange stepping minutely to one side. Tony slipped past him into a beautiful foyer. The ceilings were high, the floors were marble, and all the wood was dark. It was exactly the kind of place that screamed magic. Strange closed the door behind them. Before he could move to lean back against it the cloak slipped away from his shoulders, hovering off to one side of its own accord. Tony stared at it in fascination, the man he’d been so distracted by a moment before falling to the back of his mind in the face of witnessing what was an apparently sentient piece of clothing. He tilted his head from one side to the other, pacing around the cape in a circle while he looked for strings or propulsion systems. The swaying mass of fabric almost seemed to preen under his scrutiny.

“Why are you here, Stark?” Strange’s voice cut through the fog of intrigue, drawing his attention back to the man at the door. He cut one hell of a figure, broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist and challenge in every line of his posture.

“Well, it was professional curiosity,” Tony admitted, waving a hand to flippantly indicate the building around them. “One defender of Earth to another.”

Something heated sparked in Strange’s gaze, and Tony felt the butterflies returning to his gut tenfold as his pulse began to race. One of the doctor’s eyebrows quirked up. “Was?” 

“You gotta admit, Doc,” Tony began after a long, heavy pause, tongue darting out to moisten his lips, “sometimes you just come across something that wipes all thoughts of professionalism right out of your mind.”

The quirk in Strange’s brow spread to one corner of his lips, cocking them in a devilish smirk. “Is there really a marker for professionalism in our business?” he asked, sauntering forward directly into Tony’s personal space. 

“The other Avengers keep trying to tell me there is.” He’d lost track of the reason he’d actually come to Greenwich Village, too busy staring at the way Strange’s adam’s apple moved beneath the skin of his throat. It was a very biteable throat. “Personally, I think they all just want me to stop going out and having a good time.”

“Perhaps they just don’t trust that you’ll  _ behave _ .”

In an instant, Tony’s whole world shrank until nothing mattered but the emphasis Stephen Strange placed on that last word. Shivers of anticipation chased their way from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine. Strange had several inches of height on him, and those inches served to make the other man seem like he was looming even when his posture was relaxed. It was hot. More than hot.

“Oh, trust me,” he breathed, eyes bright. “I can behave very well with the right motivation.”


End file.
